2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Zoupa]

Even Jon Stewart, on his first day back on the daily show, had a 10 minutes segment on "haha omg both of these guys are so old and terrible".

 

[Josquius]

Even Jon Stewart, on his first day back on the daily show, had a 10 minutes segment on "haha omg both of these guys are so old and terrible".

 

Fair.
But only one wants to destroy the world.

[garbon]

Even Jon Stewart, on his first day back on the daily show, had a 10 minutes segment on "haha omg both of these guys are so old and terrible".

 

Fair.
But only one wants to destroy the world.

I just hope people get this out of their system now. As while Biden may not be the candidate we love, when it is time to support the home team, voters need to come out.

[DGuller]

Even Jon Stewart, on his first day back on the daily show, had a 10 minutes segment on "haha omg both of these guys are so old and terrible".

 

Jon Stewart deserves a good chunk of the blame for making our society too cynical to be able differentiate good actors from bad actors.  His methods and intentions are radically different from Rupert's, but the damage to democracy is comparable.

[Sheilbh]

I just hope people get this out of their system now. As while Biden may not be the candidate we love, when it is time to support the home team, voters need to come out.

Yes - my concern with that is I think it might work better to unseat a President than to re-elect an incumbent.

[DGuller]

My additional fear on top of all the usual ones is that Trump won't really be a lame duck president the way most second term presidents are.  His power in large part come from him personally rather than the position he holds.

[Josquius]

My additional fear on top of all the usual ones is that Trump won't really be a lame duck president the way most second term presidents are.  His power in large part come from him personally rather than the position he holds.

I'd just be thankful he's old there.
I could really see him and his supporters arguing "Oh its 2 consecutive terms you can't do. Of course he can run again".
Reality is flexible.

Or hell. Knowing Trumpies.... "He can't be ELECTED president again. Nothing against him just being president for longer"

[crazy canuck]

Even Jon Stewart, on his first day back on the daily show, had a 10 minutes segment on "haha omg both of these guys are so old and terrible".

 

Jon Stewart deserves a good chunk of the blame for making our society too cynical to be able differentiate good actors from bad actors.  His methods and intentions are radically different from Rupert's, but the damage to democracy is comparable.

Really? Did people really have trouble distinguishing between good and bad actors before Trump and the Russians started their disinformation campaign through social media?  Did people really have trouble doing that while Stewart was at the height of his powers on the daily show and we still had viable news media outlets that everybody watched and trusted?

Your post actually sounds more like a Russian disinformation campaign.

[crazy canuck]

My additional fear on top of all the usual ones is that Trump won't really be a lame duck president the way most second term presidents are.  His power in large part come from him personally rather than the position he holds.

I'd just be thankful he's old there.
I could really see him and his supporters arguing "Oh its 2 consecutive terms you can't do. Of course he can run again".
Reality is flexible.

Or hell. Knowing Trumpies.... "He can't be ELECTED president again. Nothing against him just being president for longer"

I think it's a real concern. In Magel land he has already won to terms. This will be his third term but because of the deep state he needs to have a third term in order to save the country. And so once he has this third term, again under the logic of MAGA land, why should the great leader stop?

[grumbler]

Jon Stewart deserves a good chunk of the blame for making our society too cynical to be able differentiate good actors from bad actors.  His methods and intentions are radically different from Rupert's, but the damage to democracy is comparable.

I have no idea what this means.  Is "Rupert" Rupert Murdoch?  If so, by what measure does Jon Stewart have anything like the media reach of the Times, Fox News, the Sun, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc, etc?  I doubt that half the people in the US even know who Jon Stewart is, past the name.

[grumbler]

My additional fear on top of all the usual ones is that Trump won't really be a lame duck president the way most second term presidents are.  His power in large part come from him personally rather than the position he holds.

I'd just be thankful he's old there.
I could really see him and his supporters arguing "Oh its 2 consecutive terms you can't do. Of course he can run again".
Reality is flexible.

Or hell. Knowing Trumpies.... "He can't be ELECTED president again. Nothing against him just being president for longer"

I think it's a real concern. In Magel land he has already won to terms. This will be his third term but because of the deep state he needs to have a third term in order to save the country. And so once he has this third term, again under the logic of MAGA land, why should the great leader stop?

Yes. Existential crises (like Wokeness)justify extraordinary actions (like suspending elections).  If Trump gets re-elected, we can only hope that his lifestyle catches up with him sooner rather than later.

[DGuller]

Jon Stewart deserves a good chunk of the blame for making our society too cynical to be able differentiate good actors from bad actors.  His methods and intentions are radically different from Rupert's, but the damage to democracy is comparable.

I have no idea what this means.  Is "Rupert" Rupert Murdoch?  If so, by what measure does Jon Stewart have anything like the media reach of the Times, Fox News, the Sun, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc, etc?  I doubt that half the people in the US even know who Jon Stewart is, past the name.

He can reach more people on the left than Rupert, and when he reaches them, he's very good at engendering cynicism towards politics in general.  That's not his intention, I'm sure, but when your job is mocking politicians, mocking politicians is all you can do. 

The problem with cynicism is that it's toxic to democracy, because at high enough dose it makes people give up on trying to gauge levels of crookedness.  Instead of punishing the worst actors and slowly inching up the standard of what's acceptable, people give up and leave everyone unaccountable, and/or go "both parties are pretty much the same, and just serve corporations".

[Josquius]

Jon Stewart deserves a good chunk of the blame for making our society too cynical to be able differentiate good actors from bad actors.  His methods and intentions are radically different from Rupert's, but the damage to democracy is comparable.

I have no idea what this means.  Is "Rupert" Rupert Murdoch?  If so, by what measure does Jon Stewart have anything like the media reach of the Times, Fox News, the Sun, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, etc, etc?  I doubt that half the people in the US even know who Jon Stewart is, past the name.

He can reach more people on the left than Rupert, and when he reaches them, he's very good at engendering cynicism towards politics in general.  That's not his intention, I'm sure, but when your job is mocking politicians, mocking politicians is all you can do. 

The problem with cynicism is that it's toxic to democracy, because at high enough dose it makes people give up on trying to gauge levels of crookedness.  Instead of punishing the worst actors and slowly inching up the standard of what's acceptable, people give up and leave everyone unaccountable, and/or go "both parties are pretty much the same, and just serve corporations".

I do think this could be a big problem going forward in the US.
As the young demographic move leftwards the Democrats will stick to the centre-right as it just makes sense with the way elections work and under the idea that they have the left wing vote locked in.
If a decent third party candidate should rise on the left... or even if cynicism grows high enough to prompt not voting.... the dems could really lose a lot of voters the more left wing party should be getting.
I've definitely seen a lot of left wing Americans online hating on Biden- last election several made clear you better bloody vote for him as better to have someone spitting in your face than stabbing you...but will they be so enthusiastic this time? And next time?

I'd like to be optimistic and think what we're seeing with Trump is peak idiocy. From here the old will die, their place taken by more digital savvy people not quite so plugged into fox news and facebook, and steadily normalcy will be restored.... but who knows.

[Sheilbh]

Although on the "young moving leftward", I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. As I mentioned in the Brexit thread it is vastly more of a feature in British politics than elsewhere - in the US it's about 40/60:


I'd also add that how that goes I think depends to a large extent on this social trend which I think is important to try and get to the bottom  - and will have big social and political implications if it continues. Which is that in the US (and a fair few other democracies) young women are moving left, while young men are moving right:


And from the US - young men holding more socially conservative views on gender than old men (I think a lot of this is something to do with lived experience, but that's also reality):


I'm not sure we can say the young in the US are moving left. I think there's a big gender split (and I think Trump is part of that or plays into it). Similarly I think the reporting/polling (it's very early and polling at this stage is meaningless) of Latino and Black (generally male) voters should cause a bit of worry for the Democrats.

I think waiting for/hoping your opponents dies is not a great (or attractive) political strategy but I also don't see any reason to think it'll work for the Democrats (remember the emerging Democrat/Republican maority depending on the year of publication). I think if the polling does hold up and there is a significant Latino and Black (male) vote for Trump that's probably enough to undo any "old people dying" political gain and probably presents a longer term risk for the Democrats.

[OttoVonBismarck]

We can say the young are moving to the left based on actual election results, in the U.S. at least.

But it shouldn't be misconstrued, a 60/40 split is ahistorically poor for Republicans in the 18-29 group, they have not generally fared that poorly in that age group--they did actually fair that poorly when Obama was running, but not before or after when Hillary ran.

Also that last chart is pretty uninteresting to me. Even the "worst" segment only around 15% of young men hold those views, that is almost certainly a view by angry unmarried men. As they age out some of them will get married and have more normal views on women.

Youth polling in that 18-29 cohort shows robust (and bad for the GOP) levels of support for abortion rights, policies to address climate change, etc. And some of those don't have much of a gender gap; there is a small gender gap on abortion rights, but not that significant of one (there is as larger gender gap overall on party affiliation.)